Posts Tagged ‘FarSight Studios’

If I write an entire post highlighting a Kickstarter for a downloadable pinball table, chances are I’ll receive seven thousand angry emails (92% from other members of the RPS staff), sixteen angrily worded letters and one visit from a door-to-door punchagram. However, when that table is The Pinball Arcade’s digital rendition of one of the greatest and most celebrated machines of all time, there are a select few who will send me pleasant emails, kindly worded letters and a door-to-door hugagram*.

Earlier this week, the Pinball Arcade finally landed on my PC, via the medium of Steam. Pinball tables were among the games that made me and the Arcade contains some of my favourites, so I’ll write more about this soon. The free download contains one table, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and there are two season packs available for purchase, with more to come. Tables can also be bought in packs of two. I’ve tried every table and while there are some camera issues, where I’ve also played the physical counterpart, I’ve found the actual recreations hugely impressive. It’s like owning a lovely digital museum. However, I do have some quibbles and they are below.

I sank countless hours into Pinball Dreams and Epic Pinball when I was a nipper, and then countless 50 pence coins into the table in the college bar at my university. I’ve always maintained that a good way to measure the true wealth of a man is to count the number of pinball tables he owns and I won’t consider myself a proper adult until I have at least one. For some people it’s a mortgage, a child or marriage, for me it’s about having a colourful, tuneful machine with metal balls bouncing around inside it. Until I do have my own pinball kingdom though, The Pinball Arcade may be of use to me, with its computerised recreations of real tables, the first four of which you can see in the trailer below.